


chase you down (until you love me)

by donutsandcoffee



Series: impossible physics and spandex [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF, X-Ray & Vav (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, xray and vav!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3153173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsandcoffee/pseuds/donutsandcoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ray is flirting with a murderous supervillain. Maybe. Probably. Ray isn’t sure—his only frame of reference of any form of flirting is the last half of <i>Love Actually</i> he accidentally caught on TV at three am, and that was only because his xbox overheated and crashed beforehand.</p><p>And then they get groceries. Together.</p><p>Ray kind of hates his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chase you down (until you love me)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m blaming [tenlittlecockbites](http://tenlittlecockbites.tumblr.com) for planting the seed of xnv!verse raywood in my head, and I saw a post by [robotentacles](http://robotentacles.tumblr.com) talking about uniform-less encounters and I am _sold._
> 
> originally posted on [tumblr](http://michaelsgavin.tumblr.com/post/107420793220/chase-you-down-until-you-love-me); posted on ao3 for organization.

Ray is  _pretty_  sure they’re flirting.

Well, Ray would be pretty sure they were flirting if it weren’t for the fact that he never had any girlfriend or boyfriend, and neither had anyone in his life he could call his friends, and therefore has absolutely  _no_  frame of reference about flirting except for the last half of  _Love Actually_  he accidentally caught on TV at three am, and that was only because his xbox overheated and crashed beforehand.

That’s the price for trading social activities with xbox achievements, he supposes.

It’s not like he has much to regret, though—his gamerscore is in the hundred thousands now, he’s an  _awesome_  superhero who has officially saved the city multiple times, and he has Gavin. Hilda and Rusty and Orf, too, these days. And. Well.

A slightly psychotic supervillain he’s probably  _flirting_  with, apparently.

“Is this all you got?” Ray announces as he evades another hit by a gigantic, cow-shaped robot (don’t ask, he’s questioning the Mad King’s design choices, too). “We’ll totally kick your ass.”

“You seem very confident in your abilities,” the very murderous, very dangerous, very,  _very_  evil super villain replies.

Murderous, dangerous, evil super villain. Right. Except, this one is a murderous, dangerous, evil super villain who also happens to be pretty fucking hot, and Ray immediately says before he can stop himself, “Those aren’t the only _abilities_  I’m confident about.”

He thinks, from the corner of his eyes, he can see Gavin  _looking_  at him like he just killed the Queen of England.

And because Ray’s train of thoughts has no brakes and he fucking hates himself, he adds, “Vav may have thought his plan long and hard, but that’s not the only one long and hard in this room.”

He wishes he could shoot himself with his X-Ray glasses.

The Mad King narrows his eyes at him, the same intense look a hunter would give its prey. It makes Ray feel like the Mad King wants to Do Things to him. Things that aren’t exactly PG-rated. Or maybe he just wants to kill him.

Either way, innuendos of questionable quality and effectiveness aside, Gavin’s plan  _was_  thought of long and hard, and it worked. It involved a laser gun (thanks, Hilda), ten pieces of five-hundred-pound giant magnets (thanks, Orf) and an elephant (thanks, Rusty, you freak, where did you get a freaking  _elephant_ ), and soon the Mad King’s cows were more useless iron plates than life-threatening robots, and the Mad King himself was standing near a large hole in the wall, ready for an escape.

Which is not something a superhero would allow, so Ray belts out his best one-liner of the day, which happens to be, “all the ladies want my Ray Gun, but there’s a different ray gun for you,” before shooting the Mad King with an actual ray gun. It’s technically a laser gun, but whatever. All in the name of a good pun.

The shot misses, and the Mad King does his evil laugh before disappearing into the smoke, as most villains ought to do.

Ray turns to Gavin to give him a smile and a high five, and met with a frustrated frown.

“What the bloody _hell_  was that, X-Ray?”

He probably needs to watch that first half of  _Love Actually_.

-

“That was flirting, wasn’t it?” Ray asks later on.

Gavin ignores him in favor of beating Ray’s character on screen, so fuck him, Ray is so going to play seriously and kick his ass in three, two—well, that was quick.

“Stop ignoring me, man,” Ray says when the  _Player One Wins_  appears on the title screen, and Gavin drops his controller to his lap and throws his hands up in the air.

“Oh, I don’t know, Ray. Are you talking about the part where you talked about your knob or are you talking about the part where you  _talked about your knob_?” He crosses his arms in front of his chest and pouts, “I talk about knobs all the time, but even I don’t talk about my knob  _that_  often.”

“How many dick jokes do you think are appropriate for flirting?” He asks, which is probably not the point of this conversation at all, but.

“Like, none at all,” Gavin says, which, fuck. So that wasn’t even flirting, which probably just turned him into a major creep. Should he apologize? Has a superhero ever apologized to a supervillain before? He’s halfway considering buying the Mad King flowers (for apologies, mind you, not anything else) before Gavin derails his thoughts by asking, “wait, you  _wanted_  it to be flirting?”

That’s… a loaded question.

(Loaded. Ha. He should really stop with the shitty dick jokes.)

“I’m getting some popcorn,” he says instead and stands up from the couch.

-

There’s a box on his doorstep the next day.

The card attached to it is signed with,  _best wishes, the Mad King._

“ _What_  is in the box?” Gavin asks warily, and Ray has seen this scene before. It’s from a movie, it’s called  _Se7en_ , and it involves a lot of blood and an extremely, horrifyingly gory outcome as the answer to that question.

He throws away the box. He keeps the card.

So it may have been flirting after all.

-

Everything comes crashing down on a bright Sunday afternoon in the cereal aisle of the local supermarket as the Mad King himself tries to weigh the pros and cons in choosing Cheerios over Froot Loops and why is he here, this is so fucking weird, can the earth just open up and swallow him whole,  _please._

The earth doesn’t do any of those things, so Ray aims for comedy instead and says, in way of greeting, “so, you don’t actually wear skirts all the time.”

The Mad King doesn’t look surprised. He never does, that creepy bastard. He simply turns to Ray after dropping two boxes of Cheerios into his basket, smirks, and raises his eyebrow in that infuriatingly sexy way as he asks, “Disappointed?”

Oh,  _come on_. Ray feels his face heat up against his better judgment. This  _has_  to be flirting, right?  _Right_?

“More disappointed by the fact that the police couldn’t recognize the Mad King out of his combat skirt,” he tries to reply calmly.

“I usually go by Ryan, actually,” the Mad King— _Ryan_ , his civilian name is  _Ryan_  like he doesn’t trap animals in basements and probably murders people in cold blood—says, shrugging. “And  _oh_ , Ray. Have you ever considered the fact that the police haven’t arrested me yet not because they don’t know who I am?”

“That’s not how the law works.”

“Perhaps that’s how it does when the law is very, very scared.”

“Good thing the law has me, then,” he says, except that doesn’t matter jack shit because he is also very scared now, and he’s leaving this aisle and possibly the entire continent,  _stat_.

-

Ryan is following him.  _The Mad King is following him around a grocery store._

Ray would’ve loved to run out of the store screaming and quite possibly crying a little bit, but it’s also his turn to buy the groceries for the headquarter this month and Gavin would absolutely kill him if he skips his turn, so he sucks it up. Ryan doesn’t seem to carry his Mad King get ups around for grocery shopping anyways, so he’s likely to be safe. Maybe.

He doesn’t count the possibility of him being followed around, though, and that wasn’t even the worst part.

“Is that  _Prego_?”

The Mad King, evil genius, PETA’s number one most-wanted and X-Ray’s oldest nemesis, is  _judging_ his groceries now.

“You got a problem with that?” He asks, and Ryan hands him a different glass jar as a reply. Ray squints to read the label before realizing that it’s written in another language. Italian, probably.

“Dude, I’m not eating something I can’t even pronounce,” he complains as he rolls the jar in his hand, trying to find something on it he can understand. He pauses when he sees the price tag. “God, what are they putting in these things? Gold?”

“Just edible foodstuff, actually,” Ryan says, “not that you’d be familiar with that, judging from the… things that are currently in your basket.”

“You’re a  _snob_ ,” Ray says in realization, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise when Ryan seems to visibly puff up at that. Only a supervillain would be proud to be called a snob, he supposes, and Ray groans.

Cold-blooded murder seems like the more preferable option now.

-

There aren’t any murders from either side, fortunately, and they reach the queue for the cashier with their groceries somehow collected in one basket and a heated debate about pizza because rich supervillain or not, he will defend pizza until the end of the world. Ryan catches a sight of the bread sold near the cashier, puts a halt to the debate (“this isn’t done yet!” Ray stubbornly calls out) and asks Ray to stand in the queue as he grabs some.

The girl standing in front of the queue turns to give Ray a peculiar look and bits her lower lip.

“You two…” she starts tentatively, eyes darting between Ray and Ryan, and Ray feels his heart drop and clatter somewhere around his feet.

So this is it. He’s been recognized, out of his suit, by a civilian. And not only is he caught, he’s caught while being buddy-buddy with the Mad King himself. They’re arguing over groceries, for god’s sakes—if there’s an encyclopedia entry for ‘fraternizing with the enemy’, the picture of him and Ryan would be right under it, in place of its definition.

He’s stumbling with his words, trying to come up with an excuse, but the girl beats him to it as she finishes her sentence cheerfully, “…are so cute. How long have you two been together?”

Oh.

Well.

That was… unexpected.

Ray turns to see Ryan balancing different loafs of bread in each hand, as if the minuscule difference in weight may potentially trigger the apocalypse. Maybe it does—god knows what ingredients he uses in his evil lab. Ryan’s nose is scrunched up in thought, in a way that reminds Ray of a pouting puppy, and there’s something warm settling at the bottom of his stomach as he thinks how this entire trip to the grocery store has been pretty domestic, and.

_Oh._

Maybe not so unexpected after all.

This might not be  _Love Actually_ , might not even be  _Love_  at all, but it’s  _actually_. Something. Ray can’t place a name on it yet, but it’s  _something_. Something past a simple, ‘dude, you’re hot,’ and one too many poorly-timed dick jokes.

He will freak the fuck out at this realization later, hiding under his blanket as he makes panicked, incoherent noises into a call with Gavin, but for now he’s tackling this the way he would every other thing in his life: with a smile and a shrug.

“Nah, we’re not together,” he says, and shoves both his hands into the pockets of his jacket. His smile deepens, slightly. “Not yet.”

_Something._

**Author's Note:**

> if you've never watched _Se7en_ , you should, but alternatively you could literally type "what is in the box" on google and get that reference. major spoiler for the movie, though.


End file.
